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Tempo Storm signs an Australian Overwatch team

Tempo Storm signs an Australian Overwatch team

Tempo Storm, an American esports company founded by Andrey “Reynad” Yanyuk, has recently ramped up their efforts to acquire foreign talent. Reynad is an avid gamer and can be seen streaming on Twitch.TV, playing popular games such as Hearthstone and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, among other popular titles.

In February, Tempo Storm picked up the Brazilian CS:GO roster of Games Academy. After finding immediate success qualifying for the Intel Extreme Masters Season X – Katowice, winning the CEVO Gfinity Season 9 Finals, and placing second at DreamHack Austin 2016, Tempo Storm sold their roster to Immortals.

Tempo Storm has recently signed current Heroes of the Storm world champions, Tempest, a South Korean based HoTS team. Now they’re acquiring some new talent for Blizzard’s latest blockbuster release, Overwatch.

Making their first periphery dive into Overwatch, Tempo Storm has acquired the rights to Untitled Spreadsheet, an Australian team. The Australian team has recently won both ESL ANZ Major Cups. In addition, Blizzard nominated five of the six players on the team to represent Australia at the Overwatch World Cup held later this year at Blizzcon during November.

Tempo Storm released a public statement on their website regarding the acquisition:

“This signing is a huge chance for not just our team, but Australian esports in general. Tempo Storm is the premiere Blizzard esports organization, so the chance to represent them in Blizzard’s next big title is something we never thought was possible at first, but we’ve managed to reach this spot. We want to show that Australia can not only keep up with the rest of the world, but beat the rest of the world and make the Tempo Storm name proud.”

While the team is comprised of former professional Team Fortress 2 players and some of Australia’s top League of Legends and Diablo players, they have yet to play any teams from Europe or North America on the international stage. Below is a quick overview of each signed player:

James “Yuki” Stanton (DPS/Captian) – Yuki’s upbringing in eSports can be traced back to his time playing competitive FPS games, such as Counter-Strike, Quake, and Team Fortress 2. He was a consistently dominating player in the Australian region.

Jordan “Gunba” Graham (Flex/Co-Captian) – Gunba is a longtime Blizzard supporter. He first came to prominence through his top Australian raiding guild in World of Warcraft. He then climbed the Greater Rift leaderboards in Diablo 3 before reaching Legend rank in Hearthstone. In fact, Gunba reached Legend rank before his new boss, Reynad (a TCG master).

Same “Refz” Rogers (Support) – Refz’s roots can be traced back to Counter-Strike 1.6 before he picked up World of Warcraft on launch. Refz quickly gained fame by reaching the top in both arenas and raiding. Refz is also an expert League of Legends player, reaching challenger rank on the Oceanic servers.

Kyall “Mosh” Margitich (Tank) – Mosh is another player with a rich background stemming from World of Warcraft. He was a member of Adept, one of the most notorious raiding guilds in WoW history. He was a strong FPS player on Natural Selection 2. Now we’ll see if he can transition those skills to Overwatch.

Brett “tjk” Bell – tjk has earned his respect the hard way, climbing up numerous FSP ladders in Australia. He is considered to have one of the most accurate first shots in the genre.

Andre “Lush” Ricardo – Lush previously has played Call of Duty, Dirty Bomb, and Quake. He has recently jumped onto the scene thanks to his stellar performance in the beta of Overwatch.